The Big White Resort mid-mountain village is somewhat compact and home to most of the ski resort facilities and services. Many of these are contained within an enormous day lodge building (Village Centre Mall). The well developed amenities at Big White Resort include on-mountain eateries, ski and snowboard rentals, child care, and a ski school with a fantastic kids’ program.
Big White Ski Rentals
The Big White equipment rentals for adults are housed in the Village Centre Mall building, whilst for kids the equipment rentals are incorporated within the Big White Kids Centre across the way. The rental shops provide a decent range of skis and snowboards; both standard and high performance. The Big White ski rentals shop also has cross-country skiing equipment. The equipment rental rates are about average for a western Canadian ski resort.
Facilities for Children
Big White Resort has one of the best kids’ programs in Canada, and has first class evening entertainment. Activities available include ice skating, hockey, tubing, fireworks and live entertainment. There are also regular family events such as carnival nights.
Tot Town Day Care is for kids aged 18 months to 5 years and includes both indoor and outdoor activities. The Big White child care programs are for a half day or full day. A daycare plus program is also provided which combines day care with skiing for young children who can’t ski the whole day (and need a nice nap!). Children ages 2-3 can have a 1 hour private ski lesson, whilst 3+ year olds can have a 2 hour group lesson. Rates for Big White child care are pretty average for a Canada ski resort.
If you want a night out on the town, the day care centre can hook you up with babysitters who will come to your lodging.
Big White Ski School
Big White offers a large variety of ski school programs including private and group lessons, special improvement programs, terrain park lessons and race camps. The Big White ski school programs are all very reasonably priced.
In line with being a great family resort, the ski school is well developed and very experienced at providing children’s lessons. Kids group ski lessons are provided for ages 3 and up, and snowboard lessons for ages 5 and up. These are either in a half day or full day format.
The ski school base is in the centre of the village which makes for easy access, or the Big White ski school provides a “pick-up” valet service where one of the instructors will come and pick up the kids from your accommodation, so long as it’s directly accessible from one of the runs and the kids are proficient enough to ride that run.
Eating On Mountain
There are a few on-mountain eateries at Big White for grabbing a snack or lunch between runs.
There’s the Ridge Day Lodge at the bottom of the Ridge Rocket chair lift that has quick grab and go snacks.
The Moonlight Bistro is a small day lodge located at the bottom of Gem Lake. They sell coffees, basic lunches and snacks.
At the bottom of the Lara Gondola is the Happy Valley Day Lodge which has a very family friendly cafeteria.
Considering the Big White village is ski-in ski-out, there are plenty of options for lunch or a snack at any of the village eateries or more formal
Big White restaurants.
Even though lunch is pretty inexpensive in most places, you might also find yourself at home eating the previous night’s leftovers. When the majority of the
Big White accommodation is so conveniently located, why wouldn’t you go home to put up your feet over lunch?